1. Technical Field
An aspect of the present invention relates to a print controlling system for a printing apparatus, which is capable of storing image data in a storage area and reading the image data therefrom to control the printing apparatus. Another aspect of the present invention relates to a computer usable medium to store a controlling program for the print controlling system.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, a controlling system for a printing apparatus which is capable of generating image data representing an image including a predetermined image such as a watermark superposed over arbitrary image and transmitting the image data to a printing apparatus has been used. Such an image includes, for example, a confidential document having a watermark to represent a character string such as “FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY” superposed thereon.
In the controlling system as described above, bitmap data representing the watermark is temporarily stored in a predetermined watermark data storage area (i.e., so-called image buffer.) The bitmap data is then processed in a superposing process unit to be superposed over another bitmap data representing the arbitrary image, and the processed data representing the arbitrary image with the watermark superposed thereon is transmitted to the printing apparatus. An example of such a controlling system is disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. H11-298717.
In the controlling system disclosed in the above referenced publication, the temporarily stored bitmap data is read out according to a location (a path name and a file name) of the bitmap data being designated. Therefore, when a number of characters included in the path name and the file name is large, a number of characters to be written in a database of a printer driver and an operating system becomes large accordingly, which may occupy the storage area of the controlling system.
In an operating system Windows®, for example, 260 characters can be included at maximum in a file name and a path name in total, therefore, a storage area for 260 byte needs to be reserved for the file name and path name designation in driver configuration. Because a volume for the driver configuration to be written in a registry of the operating system has a recommended size, it is desired to maintain the storage area for the file and the path names designation to be at smallest.